Insensitive – will you teach us all how to be insensitive? Working on this week’s podcast episode made me think of the Jann Arden song. TO BE CLEAR – the focus today is NOT on an insensitive lover. However, the more I think about it, there are lessons and potential insights that can shift your thinking about past lovers too.
Feeling crushed by the judgment of others? Try on a little bit of insensitivity. What if it works?
Your first thought on being insensitive may be the ugly side as Reese’s quote in the above image suggests? I speak to the benefits and costs associated with the ugly side of being insensitive in this week’s podcast episode. While I will outline them again here, there is more to this story AND I don’t want to leave the picture half painted.
Insensitive: Inflicting Pain
Last week we explored feelings and the importance of taking ownership of your own AND NOT taking ownership of the feelings of another. Not wanting to be insensitive is a common barrier to accepting this challenge and we’ll cover that a bit more in this post. First we’ll dig directly into the social pain and its impact.
Insensitivity Coming from a Cavalier Approach to the Feelings of Others
By letting go of the ownership of the feelings you evoke in others YOU are NOT saying you don’t care. At least that’s not the point of it. What if it’s the result though? How you choose to be insensitive, IS your responsibility. The intended impact of your actions on others is your responsibility. The resulting feelings ARE NOT – truth be told, they are out of your control. If your intent is to hurt the other person with name calling or unwanted or inappropriate touching in sensitive areas unnecessarily you’re being cruel. AND, there’ll be natural consequences in response to your behaviour. Suck it up and learn from it. Being cavalier about the feelings your actions evoke is different from feeling ownership for them.
For those who are just cavalier, there are 3 basic benefits:
- Things move along FASTER (more efficiently) because you don’t need to stop and consider the impact your actions have on others
- You experience less baggage. While this may run out over the course of a lifetime, it sure makes for easy sailing for a long time.
- Not caring what others feel allows you to experience a lot of certainty about your position. After all WHO CARES?!
Being Cavalier with feelings is costly; here are 3:
- you build weaker ties with people and experience poor relationships. Loyalty and trust is almost non-existent.
- You lack self-awareness as you plow through relationships. As a result, clarity is diminished
- You develop the fuzzy thinking or lack of perspective. After all you are limited to shallow engagements. Remember last week we discussed how thinking is the shadows of your feelings?
Facing the Cost of Being Insensitive
Look back over your career to date. Do you see times when you may have been insensitive? What did it look like and what do you learn as you look back? In the next section I’ll explore a healthy approach to insensitivity BECAUSE that’s the other side of this coin however I want to come clean about how I learned a big lesson when not applying it with care myself. If you can relate, please share your story in the comments or contact me, I’d love to hear from you. You’ll find my story (Big Why Story) below in the “HOW WE CAN WALK TOGETHER” section.
When Being Insensitive IS Self-Compassion
Being insensitive may be your ticket to happiness
The best and most difficult lessons are often nuanced. In this case we’re only exploring two sides which may be misleading because it really isn’t this easy. That said, healthy manifestations of insensitivity aren’t about hurting others, they’re about caring for yourself.
The feature image I had created includes the Renford Reese quote: “Insensitivity makes arrogance Ugly; empathy’s what makes humility beautiful”. Do you struggle with living in a healthy insensitivity? You’re not alone. This quote represents why this may be. Somehow many of us have adopted a belief that self-compassion comes second to compassion or empathy for others. I’m calling bull-shit on THAT LIMITING BELIEF this week.
Sharing thoughts on cavalier insensitivity in the first section was my earnest attempt to reject intentional or irresponsible insensitive behaviour that clearly comes out of insecurity AND arrogance. I shared my own lessons (with MY BIG WHY story) around being insensitive. WHY? Because while I don’t think my story is particularly ugly, it reveals how difficult this message or lesson is for most of us and this may be why we have such swings in how we respond to feelings, our own and another’s.
The Resistance
What makes you resist being insensitive? Interestingly it starts in your brain. One of the reasons the related brain research is the consistent element in my model/system is that all of our behaviour or patterns or beliefs or attitudes are directly related to the way our brain was formed and how it still functions. Only when you understand it in relation to your self-awareness will you be capable of using it for your advantage.
The Drug of Belonging and the the Poison-Pill of Rejection
Your brain craves belonging. Belonging is the grandfather of acceptance: wiser and more deeply grounded. From before you were born you were dependent and that didn’t change. You are and desperately need to be and feel connected to others. It’s physically painful to be disconnected from the community. Social media offers so many clear lessons in how this works.
How does it feel with you see more likes on a comment or a post? How stoked are you when you get more raving or meaningful comments than ever before on a video that felt just a smidge vulnerable? YOU ARE HUMAN and we are wired to seek connection. It’s called belonging. I do a workshop on this and there is so much research to suggest it is our need to belong that motivates everything you do. BOTTOM LINE: don’t be so hard on yourself that it is difficult to be insensitive to the expectations of the world around you. #Doingthework to get there is worthwhile work but it isn’t easy.
For a second let’s just venture into the other side. What does it do to you when you get ugly sarcastic or hateful responses after putting yourself out there? What about when there is nothing…….Interestingly being ignored or criticized for some people can be felt the same exact way. It is how your brain is wired. I’m not asking or encouraging you to ‘get over it’…just to remember it JUST IS.
Embracing Yourself
What if you embraced yourself and all that you offer the world with warmth and understanding and YES, self-awareness? Would the world start to see the full and vibrant YOU?
What I am asking of you? That you consider the options in front of you to embrace the world on your terms so you can be your full self, gift that to the world and to yourself. What will be different tomorrow or the next day or week or year or decade if you started working on it today?
My mission is to meet you squarely where you are today AND walk with you to where you want to be. I’m in your corner. I’ll have your back. Take the leap and embrace who you are by becoming insensitive to the demands or limiting expectations put on you by the world around you.
How We Can Walk together…
Finding a healthy way to embrace being insensitive is difficult. Listen to my BIG WHY Story on the services pages to hear what I learned.
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You’ll learn to #unpack4impact. Once you have the skills to unpack the emotions and barriers and triggers and mindset challenges with the skills in my system, you’ll begin to see the impact in your career and you’ll find what matters most to you.
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